Loaning money on interest or providing a credit for the sake of profit is not the same as making a trade of items with someone based on the value of the items. In economical terms, it's a black-hole of profit. Its sole function is to slowly suck money from a source. It's a gambit because if it sucks for too long it becomes a parasitic black-hole that just destroys and loses all proposed value it might have had to improve an economy. If you need proof you have our recession and The Great Depression (a better example). The banks have proven they are greedy in this respect and the government has proven it is incompetent in securing our capitalistic system (by forcing us to financially support, with our taxes and money borrowed from China, business that we didn't and still don't support). I for one could see nothing wrong with someone creating fake money to pay off the ridiculous debts they have with the greedy banks, since obviously the government isn't too keen on stopping such economical scams, nor are they wiser to the idea that borrowing money is the same as gambling - the house wins more of the time.

Guess how many of you are nincompoops? Cept Jock, his logic is even more flawless than mine, and my logic is 1000% perfect so that's doing pretty good.

I don't think it would be accurate to say that they create money out of nothing. There is no static point to compare value to when it comes to exchanging anything. When one thing gains more value, something else is devalued in relation to it.

What makes money not something in and of itself?

Lets put it like this: If I waved a magic wand, deleting all the information in bank accounts and made all the hard cash vanish, what would really change? All the cars, oil tankers and farms would still be there. All the physical elements that make up our economic system would still exist. If everyone just ignored the lack of money and carried on doing what they normally do, life would carry on without a hitch. Food would still be delivered to the supper market and there would be petrol at srvice station.

Of course, in the real world, people would panic about who owned how much of what and everything would fall to peices. Society is largely held together by such group illusions, after all.

On the other hand, if I destroyed all the farms, it would be a disaster. We would all starve! If I removed the factories, consumers would cry.

In short, removing money would necsesitate a mental adjustment. Removing the physical manifestations of wealth would needs us to make physical adjustments.

I'll give you a second example to illustrate how the illusion of money can lead to problems. Imagine an isolated farming community, where all the farmers grow a crop particular to themselves, then trade with each other. These farmers have money, and the amount of money in the system does change slowly over time, due to coins being lost and minting activities to top up the depleted levels caused by such loses.

Then, one day, as one of the farmers is about to throw out a old sette that has been in his family for generations., he notices how heavy it is. Using a knife, he cuts the back open and finds that vast amounts of money have fallen down the back over the years. Amazing, he is now the richest man in the community!

To celebrate, he goes out early on morning to visit his neighbours and uses his new fortune to buy lots of tasty food, then goes back to his wife and kids to have a feast.

All the other farmers then go back to their regular trading clutching the wads of money they got of riche farmer, but find there is a problem - there isn't enough food left for the rest of them. Consequently, they have to start bidding against each other and the prices go up. All the other farmers go home angry, confused and hungry.

The prices have indeed gone up, but by the time they do, its to late. The illusion of money has already created the problem, with one farmer possessing more resources than they deserve and not enough for everyone else. The increase of cash in the system was too rapid for the system to adjust too, and it failed.

I'm going to keep a score board for now on. So far everyone has zero points, but Andy who has one of course. Oh, and I have an infinitely amount of points so I'll remove myself from the score to keep this competitive and fair.

Regardless of whether it is ethical, it would be very interesting to see what would happen to the world if everybody could counterfeit currency. I would love to observe the madness that would follow.

I just thought of something. Printing money isn't actually illegal, as long as you don't counterfeit any pre-existing currency. I'm going to print my own currency to be use in transactions with me. Then I'm going to try and make it publicly available. Money as a product of free-market-economy, rather than made by a government.

Originally Posted by ajblaise

Counterfeiting is a thriving private enterprise. Free-market baby. Can't have big government telling us what we can and can't do with paper....

I just thought of something. Printing money isn't actually illegal, as long as you don't counterfeit any pre-existing currency. I'm going to print my own currency to be use in transactions with me. Then I'm going to try and make it publicly available. Money as a product of free-market-economy, rather than made by a government.

Good luck with that. The reason people use federal reserve notes is because the government mandates that it must be accepted for such things as court restitution. No one would trust your currency because it isn't legal tender. Not to mention the secret service would probably have a word with you.

"If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see."
Thoreau

I could only see as non-unethical (doesn't mean it's ethical...just in a limbo) something like this: suppose the FED (or any central bank) prints X units of money, suppose A is the total population of the US (or any country whose central bank is printing money), then counterfeiting the amount (1/A)*X would mean that you keep the same purchasing power. Obviously, though, if everybody did that the net effect would be zero, since the purchasing power would be eroded by the counterfeited inflation.

Lets put it like this: If I waved a magic wand, deleting all the information in bank accounts and made all the hard cash vanish, what would really change? All the cars, oil tankers and farms would still be there. All the physical elements that make up our economic system would still exist. If everyone just ignored the lack of money and carried on doing what they normally do, life would carry on without a hitch. Food would still be delivered to the supper market and there would be petrol at srvice station.

Of course, in the real world, people would panic about who owned how much of what and everything would fall to peices. Society is largely held together by such group illusions, after all.

On the other hand, if I destroyed all the farms, it would be a disaster. We would all starve! If I removed the factories, consumers would cry.

In short, removing money would necsesitate a mental adjustment. Removing the physical manifestations of wealth would needs us to make physical adjustments.

I'll give you a second example to illustrate how the illusion of money can lead to problems. Imagine an isolated farming community, where all the farmers grow a crop particular to themselves, then trade with each other. These farmers have money, and the amount of money in the system does change slowly over time, due to coins being lost and minting activities to top up the depleted levels caused by such loses.

Then, one day, as one of the farmers is about to throw out a old sette that has been in his family for generations., he notices how heavy it is. Using a knife, he cuts the back open and finds that vast amounts of money have fallen down the back over the years. Amazing, he is now the richest man in the community!

To celebrate, he goes out early on morning to visit his neighbours and uses his new fortune to buy lots of tasty food, then goes back to his wife and kids to have a feast.

All the other farmers then go back to their regular trading clutching the wads of money they got of riche farmer, but find there is a problem - there isn't enough food left for the rest of them. Consequently, they have to start bidding against each other and the prices go up. All the other farmers go home angry, confused and hungry.

The prices have indeed gone up, but by the time they do, its to late. The illusion of money has already created the problem, with one farmer possessing more resources than they deserve and not enough for everyone else. The increase of cash in the system was too rapid for the system to adjust too, and it failed.

The economy could carry on if without money or profits or credit as long as the Owners didn't mind. It's all about the Owners.

“Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I’m here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba…”